Adair

In theory, if there are enough players in the pool, you'd find a match relatively quick. But, on the off chance there are no other players, the system should tell you so, and give you the option to battle an NPC or wait.

Another notion for this is that you'd set up your ship for the cruise/escort/blockade etc at the start of the voyage, and that's all you've got to work with, except what you might scavenge from any defeated enemies. So if I want a long cruise along the Mediterranean that has like ten encounters or something, the payout would be huge, but only IF I succeed. A bad mission or a stroke of ill luck might use up more stores than I've got on hand, and we'd have to abort. Mind you, aborting wouldn't be nearly as bad as sinking, to my mind. But still, that'd be a significant penalty.

It's true, Johny Reb. I feel the same way with some games. The notion here is that you can either pay $2.99 or an in-game currency earned for completing a convoy/tour. Call it Commendation Points or something. Your navy recognizes you as someone who can get things done, so you've got the influence to go do more missions, next time with better outfittings, more materiel, or things like that.

Since Game Labs is developing Naval Action slice by slice, once they're done with the ship combat system, a solid intermediate stage between direct combat and open world could be a campaign mode. Now, I've talked about this before, but let me reiterate it here. I'm thinking about a meta-map for matchmaking: Let’s say the current campaign is a European map during the 1800’s. France vs Britain. France owns Toulon, but on the big map, Britain is pushing that way from Spain, so adding conquest points to Toulon is a top priority. Toulon has the following missions available: Blockade. Blockade Running/Smuggling. Cruising. (Just to name a few). I load up my captain and select Toulon as my destination. I only have about an hour to play today, so I select Minorca as my origin (not far at all). The route appears on the map, and I’m told it’ll give me two encounters and be worth X Cash/Conquest (both?) for successful navigation of one and Y Cash/Conquest for navigation of both. To have an impact on the overall campaign, I have to complete both, of course, but I need not necessarily win. It’s just that the encounter’s winner will have a much higher score. I select my ship type. This is where I put up my stakes. I have to 'buy' my ship. Essentially I'm purchasing the right to run this mission. Borrowing from Hearthstone, I can spend either in-game currency, premium currency, or real cash (In Hearthstone it's $2.99 for a go in the arena). If I lose, I lose. If I win half my encounters, I'll probably break even. If I win all my encounters, it'll open new options for equipment, crew, and possibly ship types. I decide on a smuggling run. I select a sloop for my ship and load it up with cargo that has been convoyed/escorted to Minorca from Britain by other players (or made locally through econ, or whatever). I want the maximum effect from this run, so I select PVP as the mission type. The computer puts me in the queue. It’ll match me against French players on a Blockade mission or a Cruise. Note that my mission isn’t necessarily to fight the French ship. If I get away, good. If he damages me badly or sinks me or whatever, then he succeeds. And I could be matched against a frigate, against which I have no chance in a fight with my sloop (or very slim), in which case I absolutely MUST get away. That’s leading back to the Core Gameplay, where wind and weather make such a difference, and how we sail and maneuver is of paramount importance. In such an encounter, we could both be deposited on a very large map, and it’s my job (as the runner) to get across the map, while it’s his job (as the blocker) to stop me. There could even be a time limit on it. I have a long way to go, but if he gauges the weather right, figures out my route, or is otherwise just plain lucky, I’ve got a real fight on my hands. And, don't forget, I asked for it by selecting a Sloop. It was cheaper in terms of stakes, but my chances of success against certain types of opponents have gone down. Also, I selected PVP, because I wanted to maximize my reward. This is key. Everything that put me in that encounter with these odds was my decision. Anyway, let’s say I’ve done my run to Toulon, did two PVP encounters, and because it was a PVP run, I contributed triple my score to a British takeover of that port and aided the land war. Note that a PVE run should always be worth less than PVP. If I wanted a greater impact, I could’ve taken a larger ship, but run the greater risk in resources. Or I could have taken a longer route, but had more encounters to deal with. Ultimately, I could have grouped with other players for more complicated battles (but this makes the matchmaking more difficult). The key being, I had no idea what I might run into, and the matchmaking algorithm picked opponents in my range. In the end, I got my fights. Heck, the French I was up against may not even have been Cruising or Blockading for Toulon specifically. It doesn’t matter so long as the port they were representing or stationed at got the benefit of their actions for good or ill. All they knew was that a sloop was trying to smuggle goods, and it was their job to stop them. Basically, I’m suggesting making the ‘Open Sea’ map more meta than what you find in POTBS. Over there, I could be in the red zone at Turtling Bay eager for a fight and another solo player is up by Matthew Town just waiting and we’ll never find each other. That’s crazy. And for what? ‘Realism’? What-the-hell-ever, you know? I’m sitting in front of my computer in my office, not actually on the deck of a 40 gun frigate. What’s going to give me that sense of ‘being there’ more? Finding him at Matthew Town, or actually shooting cannons at each other, regardless of HOW we got together? I think the answer is plain: going towards Core Gameplay at all times is key, and letting us decide just how much we're willing to gamble is even more vital. This has a lot going for it. I get fair fights in a timely fashion, and if I risk everything and lose, then that was my decision. And, from a development standpoint, the investment of resources is much lower than for an open sea sort of map.

In POTBS alt+tab would take you backwards through the list, just like tabbing through fields on a web page. Mind you, it's not like they told anyone that in the tutorial, along with half the keyboard commands and shortcuts. Like, did you know Alt+click would fire a battery if it wasn't fully loaded? You didn't get all the cannons at once, but those extra few rounds sometimes came in REALLY handy.

In the books, Surprise was in the Nelson Chequer as often as possible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Chequer

I believe the decision to surrender should lie with the captain, but morale is an important factor. Low morale means the crew won't serve the guns as rapidly or accurately as they otherwise might, Similarly, ship handling would suffer. If the captain needs incentives to surrender, it could very well be that they'll preserve a portion of their able hands and officers for their next ship if they don't fight to the bitter end. Ships took years to build, but a crack crew took just as long. The hard part is determining just what kind of penalties one suffers from losing. It needs to be significant, and needs to play into the economy, but not be so punishing that a recovery takes days or weeks (such as EVE, taking the most extreme example). POTBS had a decent churn for ships, but it could still take an hour or more to get back into the fight. And no one ever used their most expensive ships except in the biggest, most important battles. Even then, losing a durability off a First Rate was, effectively, a catastrophic loss.

Nuff said. Okay, maybe saying a little more. The POTBS treasure map system was actually pretty cool. I liked roaming around looking for the big red X. Now, I'm not sure this is something that really works for a game without avatars, but finding the unknown is a common theme in the Age of Sail, and there's nothing more entertaining than seeking vast riches in the big unknown. Just a thought. No, I haven't been drinking. Well, not much...

I wanted to talk briefly about why privateering ships could take down huge merchant ships so quickly and easily. It wasn't that the merchant ships were unarmed. They could have as many cannons as third and fourth rates. And most privateering vessels were small, fast, and didn't have a lot of firepower. The difference was in manpower. A schooner rigged out for privateering could have a hundred men or more crammed aboard, and schooners are tiny things. They were very lightly armed, but they were fast and maneuverable, and their primary purpose was to get close to the lumbering Indiamen and board. You didn't really want to be shooting at the ship that has all your loot, right? In addition to being slow and unresponsive, Indiamen were classically undermanned, especially in times of war. The Navy was always pressing able hands (and sometimes not-so-able hands) right out of any ships they'd run across. If an Indiaman had enough crew aboard to man the sails and fight the guns, they were very, very lucky. So, what did Indiamen do to protect themselves against privateers and enemy navies? They could hire escorts. Naval escorts were best, and the largest companies had influence enough in the Navy to ensure that convoys were protected. They could convoy. This is the herd mentality of 'we may not all make it, but I'll take my chances with the group.' Privateers and enemy navies were like circling hyenas, looking for the slowest-served and slowest-sailing vessels. Grabbing even one was usually enough for a privateer to pay for itself a thousand times over. They could get protection from the press. This was the rarest of the rare. If your Indiaman was one of the rarer ones with enough guns to be an actual menace, then having enough able crew to serve sails and guns was of prime importance. Mind you, not all Indiamen were like the ones in POTBS with 50 guns. Most had twenty, twelve, or even none. So, what does all this mean for Naval Action? I have no idea. But, thinking on a few things, it really depends on how the economy works. Sailing a 'fighting' Indiaman could be interesting, but I'm not sure that it would be valid as a 'class' per se, like they did in POTBS. I know that Admin has said they're avoiding a level based system (hooray!) and that sort of lends itself to avoiding classes to. It could just be that a 'class' is simply a template on which one can learn certain skills. Like in The Secret World. Everyone can learn everything eventually, but, to start, you pick a 'deck' which guides you towards an efficient build with a particular flavor, like tanking, healing, etc... Anyway, wandering off topic there. Mostly, I think Indiamen and merchant ships in general are necessities for this kind of game, but I'm not sure that sailing them would be a regular thing. They're not exactly fun ships. And sailing against them is similarly boring. They'd need escorts. Or be armed like rates. Anyway, just thinking out loud here.

I like Plerrick's suggested scenarios. I think that covers all the basics. The thing about the maps is that unless there's a reason to be near land, most battles took place on just a plain, blank map. And if the wind was blowing you towards a lee shore, you and your opponent may soon have bigger things to worry about than blowing each other out of the water.

For my part it has been Guild Wars 2, Planetside 2, Warframe, and POTBS. For MMOs, that is. GW2 does so many things well. I'm just waiting for the dungeon finder to make it complete. A gorgeous game in many respects. I agree the Planetside 2 lacks an endgame. Once you've got all your certifications, what can you do? Mind you, that does take a while. In the meantime I really enjoy playing my Infiltrator. Got up on a ridge undetected the other day with 3 enemy snipers. I knifed one, hip-shotted the second, and gunned down the third. It was lovely. And then I fell prey to a similar knifing about five minutes later haha. But it was fun. Warframe is a grand diversion. Full PVE, so there aren't really any balancing issues, and they can give your characters some crazy abilities. It's a lot of fun, if grind-ish. But that's okay so long as you love killing hordes and hordes of bad guys. Nothing quite like the Eris defense missions against infested. Go to 20 waves. You can barely see. POTBS is as POTBS does. I'm Antigua/France right now, just watching them thump Britain again and again. Alas, the poor game is still dying. I do hope the new development team can turn things around. In single player games it's XCOM and Skyrim right now. And Skyrim has only held my interest thanks to the modding community. Not only can I make it look the way I want (thank you ENB's and the usual armor mods), but there are some enemy AI mods which are fantastic. Rogues that sneak, mages that don't try to knife you, and dragons that can actually kill you, if you're not careful. It's very good with mods. And, as for XCOM, still one of the best tactical squad games out there. A beautiful descendant of the original. Fantastic work all around.

Oh yes, absolutely. However, every time the ball skipped it lost a lot of energy.

With aiming, it really depended on range and intention. Let's define some terms. Long-range, short-range, and point-blank. Long range is anything from maximum down to two hundred yards. You can direct your crews to fire at sails and rigging OR the hull. That's it. AT BEST! In every account, novel, or document I've ever read, this is the very best one can hope for. At short range, which is less than 200 yards, but greater than 30, you can direct your crews to aim for masts, waterline, rigging, or general hull. Mind you, general hull is mostly to kill cannons, and this is where some of the heaviest armor will come into play. At point-blank range, you'll be limited by elevation, and your fire will often be hampered by smoke, but you can hit almost anything you damn well please with competent gunners. Only something as 'thin' as a mast will be problematic, and only then because of smoke and the general havoc of that range. I am very ,very much in mind with Digby's disdain of 'armor' for raking fire. I very much like the notion that this causes much more crew damage than structural damage. I continue to reiterate that Crew Is Everything. Without them. you have a floating box with sails. Nothing more.

I quite agree with Digby on this. Focus on the average for whatever era we're going with, not the bizarre. And, as for shot, my only advice would be to give the various types definitive tradeoffs. For instance, in POTBS, barshot has a longer range than star shot. However, it is WAY easy to just close to star range and engage. Star does a lot more damage, so why use anything else? In reality, ranges were more problematic especially closing with any speed. And starshot was much more expensive. In POTBS, neither of these applied, so why do anything but THE most effective thing in all situations? So, again, my suggestion is to give us real decisions on how to stock and use each kind of shot. Either the sailing must make it desirable to have several types on hand, or the expense must limit our choices.

That's very comprehensive, Barberogue. Nicely done. I'm a fan of number 4 (obviously) and I think 5 would work quite nicely too. And, that said, I'll play anything if the combat is what I'm hoping it'll be.

Yeah, I didn't quite have all the terms hammered out in my head. My apologies for any misunderstandings.

Admin, forgive me, but it's almost as if you didn't read your own post. Scroll up to #7. That's what I was replying to. Is the admin account handled by more than one person? That would explain it. By 'win/loss conditions must be known immediately', I mean that when we're in a scenario, we need to know what the goal is. It can't be a secret. How else does each side know what needs to be accomplished? In your account of 'story gameplay' in post 7, it sounded like more than one encounter was an open-ended thing. That's what I was replying to.

On a personal note, if you do decide to create your own fictional setting, please, please, PLEASE hire a real writer. Don’t let someone on the team do it because they 'wrote a little in college', and don’t hire on some friend of a friend who goes to 'all the conventions' and writes fanfic. Your setting will be bland, lifeless, and average at best. There are sooo many indie games out there with interesting gameplay but garbage settings simply because they spent all their cash on artwork, programmers, and business guys without dropping a dime on a writer. If you’re going to all the time an expense, why shortchange yourselves, you know? I know that finding the real deal can be a little challenging, so if you want, send me a PM and I’ll point you to a few resources that will help. There are plenty of freelancers available if you know where to find them. And this isn’t me talking about myself. I’m employed already.

There’s one big problem with hearkening back to the days of EQ to design your Open Map experience: EQ is a primitive game by today’s standards. What you’ve described is outmoded by gameplay features that I would expect from any modern MMO. For instance, where is Curacao? If I don’t know, I’m tabbing out to the wiki. Unless we’re in the game’s very first week, I now know where it is. Why are we relying on another player not to get lost? Did my compass break? And here’s hoping he’s not a griefer leading us out to his buddies in those Spanish frigates. Did no one think to send a tell to the 74? And why did we wait an entire ‘game day’ hoping he’d go away? And just how long was that, anyway? We spent it hiding, not fighting. I agree that success or failure of any given encounter shouldn’t always be ‘sink the other guy’, but a win/loss condition needs to be known immediately. The bit about places for fishing villages was interesting, but there’s the Monopoly problem: Only one person can build on Boardwalk. Again, unless we’re in the opening weeks of this game, everything is going to get filled in. I do have an idea that could accomplish what you’re looking for: Personal servers or Guild servers Just like Minecraft, it’s my world to explore, conquer, and exploit. I can play solo, allow my friends to join, open it to the public, or whatever. I mean, if it’s my guild alone on this map, then there’s room to do a lot of what you describe. I went off exploring and found the spot for those fishing villages. I set them up, and now they’re mine. As far as my guild is concerned, I own Park Avenue. And, if we can tailor the map, anyone that wants to recreate Europe or the Caribbean or East Indies can do so. Just make the available resources they can place a function of the number of players. Create a central hub where all players across all shards can mingle and trade on the auction house. And that hub can serve as a place to engineer wars between the two worlds. Mind you, this is turning into a Nine Princes In Amber kind of setting than pure Age of Sail, but that would do what you’re talking about. Coming up with bizarre setting is how I make my living. The danger in doing what you’re talking about here is losing focus on the core gameplay. Just bear that in mind. That’s all I ask.

Thanks, adambomb. It sounds like the developers are really paying attention to all of us. Just like you, I kind of want to play right now. Another thing occurred to me: playing with friends. This is very, very important to me. As it stands, most MMOs make bringing new friends to the game difficult. I either have to start a new character or run around the starting areas with my vastly overpowered characters. And forget about my friends coming to play in endgame content for at least a month. As I say, this is common to many MMOs from POTBS to Warcraft and so on. Guild Wars 2 does a fair job of alleviating the difficulty by downranking us when we journey to our friends’ newbie zone, but you’re still a bit of a powerhouse. Once again, I’d look to Planetside’s lack of levels to get around this problem. If a friend of mine joins Planetside, he can pick his starting certification (heavy tanks, say) and he can join me in any fight immediately. I may be rank 20, and he’s rank 1, but we both die just the same to enemy fire. I’m more experienced, but not tougher. There are no game mechanics keeping me alive. It’s only my game knowledge and flexibility that makes me ‘tougher’. And both of those things have been earned through gameplay. Something similar could be done here. If my friend wants to drive a lineship, I can load up with mine, and we’ll go blockade Minorca. Or if he wants to run cargo from England to the front lines, he gets his Indiaman, and I load up my sloop or frigate. He’s immediately useful to the ‘endgame’ of conquering Europe, or ports, or whatever. Even if he’s in a lineship and I’m in a sloop, I’m still a much more knowledgeable player. It makes me more dangerous. But, if it comes to it, his guns could obliterate me in a single volley. I’m not ‘tougher’ just because my stats say I am. Or at least not substantially tougher. Does that make sense?

Cochrane's exploits are the basis for several Age of Sail characters, in fact, the two best known being Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey. The Speedy vs the Gamo was the final culmination in the first O'Brian book MASTER AND COMMANDER when Aubrey's sloop HMS Sophie took the Spanish frigate Cacafuego, similarly outgunned and undermanned. It's a very fun read!

Yes, morale is a big deal. I think it's a good place for a significant mechanic, particularly if you go with the crew allocation suggestion. A ship with high morale can shift crew from sails to guns and back relatively quickly. Low morale is going to be slower. Also, it's a good place to sink money. A well-found ship with plenty of stores is going to have a higher morale than a ship that scrimps every dime. Sid Meier's Pirates had a very interesting mechanic for morale. I don't remember it perfectly, but the longer you kept your men in service, the lower the morale got until you were forced to share out the treasure and commission a new ship. That was very cleverly done, although I think it can be improved upon.

It's true, first rates didn't ever really duel. It was absolute suicide for anything other than another lineship to start exchanging fire with one. First rates did escort duty, blockading, and battling in the line. Consider that the only encounters where a frigate 'beat' a lineship were in incidents where the frigate either forced the lineship into an unfavorable position and it disengaged, or the frigate led them off from the lineship's real objective. In O'Brian's HMS SURPRISE, Aubrey's frigate engages a French 74 to delay it long enough for the half dozen Indiamen he was escorting to begin an encircling maneuver. The 74 disengaged, having lost its decisive position and was in danger of being mauled (even if not necessarily sunk). Note that Surprise was brutally damaged in this action, and Aubrey could only attempt it because of the heavy seas. The lineship couldn't open its lowermost ports. In fact, at one point, the lineship wears along with Aubrey and very nearly gets it's 36's to bear. If it had, Surprise would've been sunk. In MASTER AND COMMANDER, Aubrey in HMS Sophie is pursued by a French squadron of a corvette, two frigates, and a lineship. Aubrey has the weather gage at the beginning of the engagement, but he can't run without risking their line. He uses every caper in his book to bring the lineship out of position and fool the enemy as to his own sailing qualities. At the last minute, he puts Sophie before the wind, runs the line (still gets shot at) and gets through. However, one of the frigates was brand new, a damn fine sailor, and Sophie was captured after a long chase. Still, it was a fantastic example of the kind of gameplay and scenarios Naval Action could feature.

I'm in line with Verhoeven (again!). A good battle requires lengthy maneuver and is often decided before the first shots start flying. I'm going to point to the O'Brian books here once more. In most '1v1' situations, Aubrey spent so much time studying the enemy to learn its sailing qualities. How quickly do they tack? What's she like on a bowline? How sluggish or quick are the crew? He'd often put his own ship through a tricky maneuver to force the enemy's response just to learn their capabilities. And, more than once, he'd play lame duck trying to draw them in, force them into committing, then flash out in a rapid turn to gain the decisive advantage. This is the kind of gameplay I'm interested in. Chess game, all the way. So, some realistic mechanics you can derive from this: Crew allocation is important. Are you shooting or maneuvering? If a bad guy can trick me into a maneuver when he's lined up to take advantage of that, then he deserves to capitalize on that. Vice versa too. Positioning is important. Getting the weather gage gives you control of the engagement, with everything that signifies. If he's trying to come up, I can rake him. If he's trying to run, I can chase. Note that if mission success isn't always dependent on sinking/taking the enemy, then the weather gage becomes even more important. In a sloop vs lineship battle, the sloop can outmaneuver me in a flash, but he doesn't dare get within range. And if my goal as a sloop is to escape his blockade, then me having the weather gage is actually a detriment. I've got to get past a huge friggin ship with vast firing range, and I can only run off the south end of the map. I'm going to have to trick him into committing into a maneuver and hope to get by. Or wait for the weather. Or hope his crews are slow. Sailing qualities are important. I need to know my ship through and through. Just how closely will she lie? How quick are we in stays? What's our leeway? And gearing becomes important here too. How many spars do I have on hand in case the enemy knocks away something important? What condition are my masts in? In the Aubrey books he always contrived to have a mainmast that was rather overgeared for the ship he was in. In MASTER AND COMMANDER, the first book, he deliberately cracked HMS Sophie's aging mainyard to get a beautiful new one from the yard. Oh, and information is important. If I know I'm up against Verhoeven in his bark, then I probably have a good idea what he's about. For that reason, I think matchmaking should be anonymous until after the battle is won or lost. I can't tell you how many times in POTBS I'd hear that French Privateer X was cruising Matthew Town. I knew the guy was a rageboarder, so I'd quickly load up with tough masts and boarding defenses, lure him into attempting to board, he'd fail, then I'd grapple him. Yawn. Not knowing what I might find and discerning their tactics through observation is way more fun. Concerning time for a battle, I'd say no more than an hour. An average fight being about 30 minutes would suit me. Some mission types could even be timed. Heck, some might need to be, just to put pressure on one side or the other (or both). Also, knowing how many encounters a particular journey is going to give me is important. Or the ability to log out mid-journey and resume when I come back. That would be very useful. I can't tell you how many times I'd have a half hour to play POTBS, look at the map, and determine that I was better off just playing something else. Other games have the same sort of issues. EVE for one. Star Trek also, although their 'transwarp to mission' feature helps a lot.

I believe the only 'luck' factor should come from the random number generator server side. When my Indiaman is getting chased by a crack frigate, I'm going to order my chasers to aim for his sails and rigging in the hopes of knocking away something important. At that point, luck will determine whether we get away or not. And he'll be doing the same for me, no doubt! I'm with Verhoeven and Digby on this. The best captains relied on luck, but also stacked the deck in their favor as battles evolved.